2226
There's still room for improvement, but Linux gaming has come a long way in a short time.
(lemmy.world)
I remember when Proton launched it was like magic playing games like Doom and Nier Automata straight from the Linux Steam client with excellent performance. I do not miss the days of having the Windows version of Steam installed separately.
I still remember having to use Ubuntu back in 2007.
To cut a long story short, I used to have a crappy Packard Bell PC that was weirdly partitioned (the main C:\ partition named Programs had 20GB and D:\ named Data had 120GB allocated.)
A (obviously now former) friend at school who thought he was hot-shit with PCs nagged and pressured me into acquiring a copy of Norton PartitionMagic and merging the two partitions. Completely totalled the Windows XP installation and because I didn't have any recovery media, I was forced to wipe everything and install Linux.
Gaming on Ubuntu back in 2007 was a nightmare. Only thing I managed to run that wasn't some shitty FOSS game that looked like it was made for the Net Yaroze was WoW, and even then actually installing the damn game was a nightmare where I had to resort to literally copying files from each install CD because actually running the installer from the CD itself resulted in failure by Disc 3. Every other game I tried to run through Wine either refused to boot at all, had bugs that would soft-lock my PC, or put out 0.01 frames per second due to lack of OpenGL support.
Linux has evolved by leaps and bounds but still has some way to go before you could use it as a gaming OS. Hopefully the Steam Deck encourages more developers to support Linux.
Of course, some devs have turned their back on Linux, such as post-Fortnite Epic Games.
Windows will die if it cannot be pirated.